June 27, 2019 • 9 mins
The items on display in the Cabinet today were both dug up a long time ago. But the stories they've invited us into have managed to stay strong ever since.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The humble farmer the
(00:29):
backbone of the American way of life. They grow and
harvest to provide not only for their own families, but
ours as well. Everything from corn to potatoes to squash
is cultivated across world farmland from coast to coast. However,
in eighty nine, something else was unearthed in a farmer's field,
something that didn't make sense, something that didn't belong there.
(00:54):
Workers in Vermont were digging up land to build the
first railroad between Burlington and Rutland. During the dig, one
of the workers noticed something sticking up in the dirt, bones,
quite a few of them. In fact, he didn't think
much of them at the time, seeing as how horse
skeletons had been spotted from time to time as they
were pulling up the land. So they kept working, not
(01:15):
caring too much about what happened to the former horse.
They just unearthed. A local residents, Mr John G. Thorpe,
had been passing by when he too saw the bones
poking out from the dig site. There was something about
them that struck him as odd, though he certainly didn't
think they were horse bones, so he convinced the man
in charge of the railroad project to move his workers
(01:36):
to another plot of land so he could collect and
analyze the bones. Naturalist ZADEK. Thompson was brought in for
his expertise in identifying what kind of animal the bones
had once belonged to. Thompson was a prolific author of
many animal and nature guides. Despite serious limitations to his situation.
No one else was working in his field, and he
(01:58):
had no access to specimens or books to further his studies.
He was charting new territory for the scientific community, but
that didn't stop him from studying the various flora and
fauna in his native Vermont, including the skeleton Mr. Thorpe
had rescued from the railroad workers. After some consideration and examination,
(02:19):
Mr Thompson identified it as having belonged to the ancient
ancestor of the Beluga whale. While there was no way
to determine its sex, its skull and teeth indicated the
twelve foot long specimen had been a full grown adult
before its death. It was a fascinating discovery, but there
were two questions the men shared, as did everyone else
who came across the specimen. First, how did a beluga
(02:42):
whale wind up in the middle of a farmer's field
in Vermont, one fifty miles from the closest shore. And second,
how had it made its way so far down from
the native Arctic waters of the North. Such a creature
had no business being so far from its home. Well,
it took a while for technology and environmental studies to
(03:03):
catch up. The scientists eventually learned that the Charlotte whale,
named for the town where it was discovered, had been
stuck in Vermont for a very long time. The bones
had been preserved under ten feet of blue clay sediments
left over from the Champlain Sea, a temporary inlet that
had formed when glaciers retreated at the end of the
last glacial period. The sea had dried up thousands of
(03:26):
years ago, leaving the whale and presumably other creatures in
the middle of Vermont with no way out. Today, the
Charlotte whale is the official state marine fossil of Vermont,
and while it's certainly strange to find something as large
as a dead whale so far from the ocean. It
happens more than we realize. Discoveries like this teach us
(03:47):
about how the Earth changes, how oceans shift over time,
and even how those changes affect the migration of wildlife
around the globe. The world around us is never constant.
We may think we're fine, but if we sit still
long enough, we might discover we've missed our window to
get out, just like the Charlotte whale. While America is
(04:23):
a relatively young country, the history of the land upon
which it sits extends as far back as the beginning
of time itself. Culture has lived and died for thousands
of years before we got here, and we can still
see remnants of their existence if we look hard enough.
Drawings on cave walls and artifacts left behind offer insight
into how they lived and what they cared about. Shards
(04:45):
of ornate pottery can tell us how a culture might
have valued craftsmanship as much as they valued practicality. But
what about the artifacts that defy explanation, the ones that
cannot be explained and in one case, shouldn't exist at all.
Near a small town in Minnesota, in a Swedish resident
(05:06):
named Olaf Omen had recently purchased a plot of land
needing some clean up. The trees and old stumps had
to be pulled out so he could start plowing. As
he was working with his ten year old son Edward
at his side, it came across a poplar tree with
something tangled in its roots. It was large and gray
and heavy, a slab of rock weighing over two hundred pounds.
(05:28):
While unusual for something so large to be found at
the base of a tree, Olaf didn't think much of
it until his son mentioned the strange markings all over
its sides and face. He had assumed they'd found an
old Native American almanac, a record of past and future
events as predicted by the local native population from hundreds
of years ago. Olaf had a copy of the inscriptions
(05:49):
sent to several universities for analysis, and the results weren't
what he'd expected. It spoke of a mixed group of
Norwegians and Germans setting out on a journey from Vinland
to America in thirteen sixty two, on thirty years before
Columbus would set foot in the New World. According to
(06:10):
the historians and linguistic experts at the time the stone
was a forgery, a fake. The symbols weren't Native American
but modern Scandinavian in origin, and while the stone itself
was many centuries old, the tree that it had supposedly
been buried beneath was only about thirty years old. Olaff
later sold the stone to historian Yalmar Holland for ten
(06:32):
dollars and walked away from his discovery. Holland, however, wanted
the world to know about it. He believed in its
authenticity and wrote an article that went about as viral
as an article could get. Back in the nineteenth century,
he took the Kensington Ruined Stone, named for the town
it was found in, on a tour across Europe, struggling
for forty years to convince the smartest people in the
(06:53):
world that what he possessed was a truly unique historical artifact. Unfortunately,
historians and x where It's concurred that despite the stone
itself being quiet ancient, the language and the carvings found
on it were no more than a hundred years old.
It didn't help that in nineteen seventy six, an interview
with the son of a man who had known olaf
Omen came to light, wherein he confessed that Omen himself
(07:15):
had carved the inscriptions, and that seemed to be the
end of the story. The Ruined Stone had been nothing
more than an elaborate hoax, to what end no one knows.
But in night two a professor at Cornell University named
Robert Hall decided to take another crack at it. He
re examined the ruins, eventually publishing a book on his findings.
(07:37):
He took issue with how the stones critics had conducted
their research and claimed that the bizarre mix of ancient
and modern Scandinavian could have been due to the Swedish
language starting to change at the time. Two distinct groups
from different regions in the world traveling together for so
long might have resulted in the linguistic equivalent of cross pollination.
(07:57):
In addition, a letter written by Dutch cartog or for
gerardis Mercator to the mathematician John d referred to a
man who had received word of eight men traveling to
the Arctic Islands from Norway in the mid thirt hundreds.
Journeys from Scandinavia to North America at the time, we're
apparently not unheard of today. The Kensington Ruined Stone is
(08:18):
the centerpiece of the aptly named Ruinstone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota,
and its influence extends far beyond its questionable origin story.
The stone and its alleged Viking heritage have inspired the
state's official football team, the Minnesota Vikings, as well as
countless other buildings and businesses with similarly themed names. What
(08:39):
began as a curious discovery in an empty field transformed
an entire state's identity. The debate over the Kensington Runestone
continues to this day, but it's authenticity might not even
matter anymore. It's not the reality that people have lashed onto,
but the belief in what it could be, who we are,
(08:59):
It's names is never set in stone. I hope you've
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
(09:22):
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
learn all about it over at the World of Lore
dot com, and until next time, stay curious.
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The humble farmer the
(00:29):
backbone of the American way of life. They grow and
harvest to provide not only for their own families, but
ours as well. Everything from corn to potatoes to squash
is cultivated across world farmland from coast to coast. However,
in eighty nine, something else was unearthed in a farmer's field,
something that didn't make sense, something that didn't belong there.
(00:54):
Workers in Vermont were digging up land to build the
first railroad between Burlington and Rutland. During the dig, one
of the workers noticed something sticking up in the dirt, bones,
quite a few of them. In fact, he didn't think
much of them at the time, seeing as how horse
skeletons had been spotted from time to time as they
were pulling up the land. So they kept working, not
(01:15):
caring too much about what happened to the former horse.
They just unearthed. A local residents, Mr John G. Thorpe,
had been passing by when he too saw the bones
poking out from the dig site. There was something about
them that struck him as odd, though he certainly didn't
think they were horse bones, so he convinced the man
in charge of the railroad project to move his workers
(01:36):
to another plot of land so he could collect and
analyze the bones. Naturalist ZADEK. Thompson was brought in for
his expertise in identifying what kind of animal the bones
had once belonged to. Thompson was a prolific author of
many animal and nature guides. Despite serious limitations to his situation.
No one else was working in his field, and he
(01:58):
had no access to specimens or books to further his studies.
He was charting new territory for the scientific community, but
that didn't stop him from studying the various flora and
fauna in his native Vermont, including the skeleton Mr. Thorpe
had rescued from the railroad workers. After some consideration and examination,
(02:19):
Mr Thompson identified it as having belonged to the ancient
ancestor of the Beluga whale. While there was no way
to determine its sex, its skull and teeth indicated the
twelve foot long specimen had been a full grown adult
before its death. It was a fascinating discovery, but there
were two questions the men shared, as did everyone else
who came across the specimen. First, how did a beluga
(02:42):
whale wind up in the middle of a farmer's field
in Vermont, one fifty miles from the closest shore. And second,
how had it made its way so far down from
the native Arctic waters of the North. Such a creature
had no business being so far from its home. Well,
it took a while for technology and environmental studies to
(03:03):
catch up. The scientists eventually learned that the Charlotte whale,
named for the town where it was discovered, had been
stuck in Vermont for a very long time. The bones
had been preserved under ten feet of blue clay sediments
left over from the Champlain Sea, a temporary inlet that
had formed when glaciers retreated at the end of the
last glacial period. The sea had dried up thousands of
(03:26):
years ago, leaving the whale and presumably other creatures in
the middle of Vermont with no way out. Today, the
Charlotte whale is the official state marine fossil of Vermont,
and while it's certainly strange to find something as large
as a dead whale so far from the ocean. It
happens more than we realize. Discoveries like this teach us
(03:47):
about how the Earth changes, how oceans shift over time,
and even how those changes affect the migration of wildlife
around the globe. The world around us is never constant.
We may think we're fine, but if we sit still
long enough, we might discover we've missed our window to
get out, just like the Charlotte whale. While America is
(04:23):
a relatively young country, the history of the land upon
which it sits extends as far back as the beginning
of time itself. Culture has lived and died for thousands
of years before we got here, and we can still
see remnants of their existence if we look hard enough.
Drawings on cave walls and artifacts left behind offer insight
into how they lived and what they cared about. Shards
(04:45):
of ornate pottery can tell us how a culture might
have valued craftsmanship as much as they valued practicality. But
what about the artifacts that defy explanation, the ones that
cannot be explained and in one case, shouldn't exist at all.
Near a small town in Minnesota, in a Swedish resident
(05:06):
named Olaf Omen had recently purchased a plot of land
needing some clean up. The trees and old stumps had
to be pulled out so he could start plowing. As
he was working with his ten year old son Edward
at his side, it came across a poplar tree with
something tangled in its roots. It was large and gray
and heavy, a slab of rock weighing over two hundred pounds.
(05:28):
While unusual for something so large to be found at
the base of a tree, Olaf didn't think much of
it until his son mentioned the strange markings all over
its sides and face. He had assumed they'd found an
old Native American almanac, a record of past and future
events as predicted by the local native population from hundreds
of years ago. Olaf had a copy of the inscriptions
(05:49):
sent to several universities for analysis, and the results weren't
what he'd expected. It spoke of a mixed group of
Norwegians and Germans setting out on a journey from Vinland
to America in thirteen sixty two, on thirty years before
Columbus would set foot in the New World. According to
(06:10):
the historians and linguistic experts at the time the stone
was a forgery, a fake. The symbols weren't Native American
but modern Scandinavian in origin, and while the stone itself
was many centuries old, the tree that it had supposedly
been buried beneath was only about thirty years old. Olaff
later sold the stone to historian Yalmar Holland for ten
(06:32):
dollars and walked away from his discovery. Holland, however, wanted
the world to know about it. He believed in its
authenticity and wrote an article that went about as viral
as an article could get. Back in the nineteenth century,
he took the Kensington Ruined Stone, named for the town
it was found in, on a tour across Europe, struggling
for forty years to convince the smartest people in the
(06:53):
world that what he possessed was a truly unique historical artifact. Unfortunately,
historians and x where It's concurred that despite the stone
itself being quiet ancient, the language and the carvings found
on it were no more than a hundred years old.
It didn't help that in nineteen seventy six, an interview
with the son of a man who had known olaf
Omen came to light, wherein he confessed that Omen himself
(07:15):
had carved the inscriptions, and that seemed to be the
end of the story. The Ruined Stone had been nothing
more than an elaborate hoax, to what end no one knows.
But in night two a professor at Cornell University named
Robert Hall decided to take another crack at it. He
re examined the ruins, eventually publishing a book on his findings.
(07:37):
He took issue with how the stones critics had conducted
their research and claimed that the bizarre mix of ancient
and modern Scandinavian could have been due to the Swedish
language starting to change at the time. Two distinct groups
from different regions in the world traveling together for so
long might have resulted in the linguistic equivalent of cross pollination.
(07:57):
In addition, a letter written by Dutch cartog or for
gerardis Mercator to the mathematician John d referred to a
man who had received word of eight men traveling to
the Arctic Islands from Norway in the mid thirt hundreds.
Journeys from Scandinavia to North America at the time, we're
apparently not unheard of today. The Kensington Ruined Stone is
(08:18):
the centerpiece of the aptly named Ruinstone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota,
and its influence extends far beyond its questionable origin story.
The stone and its alleged Viking heritage have inspired the
state's official football team, the Minnesota Vikings, as well as
countless other buildings and businesses with similarly themed names. What
(08:39):
began as a curious discovery in an empty field transformed
an entire state's identity. The debate over the Kensington Runestone
continues to this day, but it's authenticity might not even
matter anymore. It's not the reality that people have lashed onto,
but the belief in what it could be, who we are,
(08:59):
It's names is never set in stone. I hope you've
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
(09:22):
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
learn all about it over at the World of Lore
dot com, and until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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